[Lexicog] Help, dictionary rules

[Ronald Moe]

Mark Awakuni-Swetland wrote:

"Could you send your short list of introductory works on lexicography, off
list, please?"

 

Margaret Marks wrote:

"Or even on-list?"

 

A couple of other people have provided links to websites, which are the best
places to start. I won't try to duplicate these resources, but will add a
few references that I have found helpful.

 

I am a member of SIL, which works in about 1000 languages around the world.
We have published lots of dictionaries and have hundreds more being worked
on. The challenges of documenting minority languages, many of which are
unwritten, result in some concerns that are not relevant to lexicography in
the major languages of the word. For instance many of us have no text corpus
and must create one in order to use the corpus method. Older reference works
written by SIL members assume that most data will be elicited. An example is
the following:

 

Bartholomew, Doris, and Louise C. Schoenhals. 1983. Bilingual dictionaries
for indigenous languages. SIL-Mexico.

 

This book was influential in its day, and is especially relevant for
lexicography in Latin American. However it contains very little reference to
the use of texts. In contrast the following more recent book has an entire
chapter on the challenges of creating a text corpus in a language with
little or no published works.

 

Newell, Leonard E. 1995. Handbook on Lexicography. Manila: Linguistic
Society of the Philippines.

 

This book is especially relevant for Philippine (and other Austronesian)
languages and is a good practical introduction to lexicography in a minority
language setting. (I first learned lexicography from Len Newell.)

 

Another SIL publication that has been influential is the following.

 

Coward, David F., and Charles E. Grimes. 1995. Making dictionaries, a guide
to lexicography and the Multi-Dictionary Formatter. Waxhaw: Summer Institute
of Linguistics.

 

MDF has its limitations, but its primary contribution has been to provide a
set of standard format markers. It was designed to be used with the popular
Shoebox software. Other software such as Lexique Pro assumes MDF as a
standard.

 

My own Dictionary Development Process has been used by at least 100
dictionaries projects both within and outside of SIL. The documentation and
materials can be downloaded from the SIL website
(http://www.sil.org/computing/ddp/index.htm). It is a set of materials and
methods for rapidly developing a large (but fairly basic) dictionary. I'm
also writing documentation for the new FieldWorks program that integrates
DDP into FieldWorks. The first draft is available in the FieldWorks Help
files. You can download DDP, Shoebox (the more recent version is called
Toolbox), MDF, and FieldWorks from the SIL website. All are free.

 

That is all I want to say about SIL publications.

 

Richard's original inquiry asked about using simple language in definitions.
The following dictionary uses a limited set of 2000 words in its
definitions. It contains an appendix that lists them.

 

Longman Language Activator. 1993. Essex: Longman House.

 

The use of a small set of words has a theoretical basis. I've been
influenced by Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). The following is a good
introduction.

 

Goddard, Cliff. 1998. Semantic analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

NSM is not a practical defining language, but I've found it to be very
helpful in clarifying the meaning of words.

 

I consider an understanding of conceptual metaphors to be essential in
understanding many secondary senses. The best introduction to conceptual
metaphors is the following.

 

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.

 

There are lots of other theoretical works, but it is Saturday night and I
don't want to spend all night on this. :-( I wish there was an up to date
practical guide to lexicography that could be used to teach (yourself)
lexicography. (Perhaps there is and I just haven't read it.) Perhaps the
LexicographyList could set up a website that we could all contribute to. I
would like to see an on-line course, text book, a modular set of reference
materials, tools, glossary, etc.

 

Ron Moe

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